http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
EACH year, this column recognizes valiant service on behalf of the
Nation's security and vital interests by bestowing the coveted "Horatio at
the Bridge" Award. During this cycle, as usual, there has been fierce
competition for this distinction, named for the legendary Roman whose
single-handed defense of a bridge against huge odds is said to have saved
his city.

Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma came in a close second for his heroic
efforts to preserve the opportunity for live-fire training on the island of
Vieques that is critical to our troops' ability to survive and prevail in
combat. Senators Fred Thompson, Jon Kyl, John Warner, Richard Shelby and
Jesse Helms earned an honorable mention for the robust resistance they have
been mounting to Sen. Phil Gramm's "High Tech for China bill" -- an Export
Administration Act that would effectively end the President's ability to
control the sale overseas of militarily relevant technologies.

The award this year[, though,] goes to two individuals -- my friend
and colleague, Roger W. Robinson, Jr., and Rep. Frank Wolfe, an 11-term
Congressman from Virginia -- whose longstanding struggles on behalf of
national security, human rights and religious freedom have just borne
important fruit in an unlikely, but enormously important, arena: the
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

A bit of background is in order. Some five years ago, Mr. Robinson
turned the skills he had honed as an international banker with Chase
Manhattan Bank and as a senior economist on President Reagan's National
Security Council staff to a serious, and growing, problem: the penetration
of the U.S. capital markets by foreign governments and companies engaged in
activities inimical to American security interests and values.

Such penetration has been made possible, in no small measure, by the
relative lack of transparency required of foreign entities by the SEC
compared to that demanded of domestic concerns seeking to raise funds in the
U.S. debt and equity markets. American investors have, as a result, been
unwittingly putting billions of dollars into the hands of certain unsavory
Communist Chinese, Russian and other entities who Mr. Robinson calls "global
bad actors" via the formers' pension plans, mutual funds, life insurance and
personal portfolios, etc. that hold benign-sounding "Pacific growth,"
"emerging market" and other investments.

Mr. Robinson and his colleagues at the Center for Security Policy's
William J. Casey Institute have tried to raise an alarm about this problem
and to encourage market-oriented corrective action by federal regulators.
The recently departed SEC Chairman, Arthur Levitt, assiduously refused to
address the issue. The Clinton Administration wanted no part of any
initiative that might restrict funds flowing to its so-called "strategic
partner," China, or others wanting to access some $30 trillion in the U.S.
capital markets. And, in the face of suppressing fire from prestigious Wall
Street firms who lust after the sizeable fees associated with bringing even
dubious foreign offerings to market, interest on Capital Hill has been
episodic, at best. This poor performance stood in sharp contrast to the
concern about such transactions Mr. Robinson's work engendered among
non-federal officials and pension funds in California and other states.

The Casey Institute's Capital Markets Transparency Initiative
reached critical mass recently with the convergence of two developments:
First, the growing determination to halt the government of Sudan's
involvement in genocide, slave-trading, proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction and support for terrorism created an insistent demand for new
sources of U.S. leverage. An attractive option would be to curtail the
access to the American stock and bond markets enjoyed by Chinese, Canadian
and other foreign oil companies engaged in the development and exploitation
of Sudan's energy reserves. After all, the Khartoum government has publicly
stated that the revenues generated by such activity are paying for its
brutal war against Christians and animists in southern Sudan.

Second, this year Rep. Wolf -- one of the Congress' most active
opponents of the Sudanese regime and the horror it is inflicting on its own
people -- became the chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that
funds the Securities and Exchange Commission. Messrs. Wolf and Robinson
teamed up to get something done about Sudan and, in the process, to create
systemic changes that would strengthen transparency and discipline in the
U.S. capital markets.

With the commendable cooperation of Arthur Levitt's interim
replacement, Acting SEC Chairman Laura Unger, and the Director of the SEC's
Division of Corporation Finance, David Martin, our two Horatios sought --
and secured -- fundamental changes in the way foreign countries, governments
and entities do business on Wall Street. These changes were described in an
extraordinary letter sent by Ms. Unger to Mr. Wolf on May 8. They include:
greater transparency as to where and with whom foreigners seeking to bring
offerings to market are doing business; mandatory electronic filing by such
offerers, affording far greater opportunity for investors and market
monitors to detect bad actors; and intensified SEC oversight of foreign
registrants in the U.S. markets.

Such regulatory changes by the Securities and Exchange Commission
will not, in and of themselves, preclude those providing financial
life-support to the government of Sudan, Chinese missile manufacturers, the
Russian mafia, drug dealers, proliferators, foreign intelligence services,
terrorists or other undesirables from securing large sums on Wall Street.
The SEC's actions do make these efforts much more difficult, however, simply
by allowing investors to make informed decisions.

For helping create what might be called the Unger Standards for
transparency and discipline at the SEC, Roger Robinson and Frank Wolf are
worthy not only of the 2001 "Horatio at the Bridge" award. They deserve the
thanks of all of us whose security and values may be less imperilled by the
bad actors who would otherwise have been enabled to gain access to private
American capital. It will now fall to President Bush and his newly
announced nominee to chair the Security and Exchange Commission, Harvey
Pitts, to consider ways in which such transparency and discipline can be
further strengthened to the advantage of both investors and the Nation as a
whole.